Polygamy

Polygamy in Scripture is the practice of one man taking more than one wife. The narrative books record it from Lamech onward, the Mosaic law restrains and regulates it without commanding it, the historical books trace its trajectory through the patriarchs and into the royal houses of Israel and Judah, and the New Testament restricts its practice — at least for those who would oversee or serve a congregation — to the husband of one wife. The pattern across the canon is consistent: where the practice appears, household strife, favoritism, and rivalry follow it.

Mosaic Restraint and Tolerance

The Torah does not permit a king of Israel to multiply wives. Deuteronomy is explicit on the danger: "Neither will he multiply wives to himself, that his heart will not turn away" (Deut 17:17). The legal code likewise forbids one specific form of plural marriage — taking a wife's sister as a co-wife — "to be a rival [to her], to have any sex with her, besides the other in her lifetime" (Lev 18:18).

Where the practice is tolerated, the law builds protections around it. A man who takes a second wife may not diminish what is owed the first: "her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, he will not diminish" (Ex 21:10). And where two wives bear sons, the firstborn cannot be displaced by the son of the favored mother: "he will not make the son of the beloved the firstborn before the son of the hated, who is the firstborn" (Deut 21:15-17). The casuistic phrasing — "if a man has two wives, the one beloved, and the other hated" — assumes both that polygamy occurs and that it routinely produces a hated and a favored wife.

The Patriarchal Houses

The first named polygamist is Lamech, of the line of Cain: "And Lamech took to him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah" (Gen 4:19). With the patriarchs the pattern continues, and so does the strife.

Sarai gives Hagar her Egyptian slave to Abram as wife, and as soon as Hagar conceives "her mistress was despised in her eyes" (Gen 16:4). Sarai deals harshly with her, Hagar flees, and the household remains unsettled; years later Sarah sees Ishmael mocking and demands, "Cast out this slave and her son. For the son of this slave will not be heir with my son, even with Isaac" (Gen 21:9-16).

Esau marries Judith and Basemath the Hittites at forty (Gen 26:34) and then takes Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael "besides the wives that he had" (Gen 28:9). Jacob, deceived into marrying Leah, takes Rachel a week later and the favoritism is reported plainly: "he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet another seven years" (Gen 29:30). The unloved sister bears Reuben because "Yahweh saw that Leah was hated" (Gen 29:31), and the sons keep coming under the same shadow. Then Rachel's barrenness drives a slave-wife competition — Bilhah from Rachel, Zilpah from Leah — until Leah herself bargains for conjugal rights with mandrakes: "Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? And would you take away my son's mandrakes also?" (Gen 30:15). The whole arc of Genesis 29-30 is one polygamous house at war with itself.

Job's reflection on the wicked man assumes the practice in passing: "Those who remain of him will be buried in death, and his widows will make no lamentation" (Job 27:15) — plural widows for one man.

Judges, Chronicles, and the Pre-Monarchic Period

Ashhur the father of Tekoa "had two wives, Helah and Naarah" (1Ch 4:5). Gideon's seventy sons are bluntly explained: "for he had many wives" (Judg 8:30). And Elkanah at the threshold of the monarchy "had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah: and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children" (1Sa 1:2). The annual sacrifice at Shiloh becomes the stage for the same favoritism-and-rivalry pattern Genesis records: Elkanah gives Hannah "a special portion; for he loved Hannah" (1Sa 1:5), Peninnah "provoked her intensely, to make her fret" (1Sa 1:6), "therefore she wept, and did not eat" (1Sa 1:7).

The Davidic and Solomonic Harems

David's household grows by stages. After Nabal's death he sends for Abigail, "to take her to him as wife" (1Sa 25:39); she becomes his wife (1Sa 25:42); "David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel; and they became both of them his wives" (1Sa 25:43); and Saul's earlier reassignment of Michal to Palti is noted in the same breath (1Sa 25:44). By the Hebron list six wives are accounted for in the firstborn-son register — Ahinoam, Abigail, Maacah, Haggith, Abital, Eglah (2Sa 3:2-5). Then "David took more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem, after he came from Hebron" (2Sa 5:13), and the Chronicler echoes the notice: "And David took more wives at Jerusalem; and David begot more sons and daughters" (1Ch 14:3). The one place the Old Testament speaks of plural wives as a divine gift is Nathan's oracle to David: "I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives into your bosom" (2Sa 12:8) — Saul's harem, transferred with the kingdom.

Solomon takes the practice past restraint. "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women" (1Ki 11:1), "and he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart" (1Ki 11:3). The text reads as a direct violation of the Deuteronomic warning: "his heart wasn't perfect with Yahweh his God, as was the heart of David his father" (1Ki 11:4); Solomon goes after Ashtoreth and Milcom (1Ki 11:5), builds a high place for Chemosh and for Molech (1Ki 11:7), and "did so for all his foreign wives" (1Ki 11:8).

Royal Polygamy After Solomon

The pattern descends through the Davidic line. Rehoboam "took eighteen wives, and threescore concubines, and begot twenty and eight sons and threescore daughters" (2Ch 11:21), and the favoritism is on record: he "loved Maacah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and his concubines" (2Ch 11:21), and "he sought [for them] many wives" for his other sons (2Ch 11:23). His son Abijah "waxed mighty, and took to himself fourteen wives, and begot twenty and two sons, and sixteen daughters" (2Ch 13:21). Jehoram's plural wives are named in the prophetic threat against him: "Yahweh will strike with a great plague your people, and your sons, and your wives, and all your substance" (2Ch 21:14). Joash receives two wives at the hand of Jehoiada the priest: "And Jehoiada took for himself two wives; and he begot sons and daughters" (2Ch 24:3). Ahab in the north has "seventy sons in Samaria" (2Ki 10:1), and Jehoiachin's plural wives go with him into Babylonian exile: "the king's wives, and his officers, and the chief men of the land, he carried into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon" (2Ki 24:15). At the close of the line of foreign kings the practice is still intact at Belshazzar's feast — "the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines" drink from the temple vessels (Dan 5:2).

The Prophetic Witness

Hosea's prophetic sign-act includes a second woman: "Go again, love a woman loved by a companion, but [is] an adulteress" — and he buys her "for fifteen [shekels] of silver, and a homer of barley, and a half-homer of barley" (Hos 3:1-2). The pattern is read into Yahweh's own loyalty toward unfaithful Israel.

Isaiah, by contrast, projects the social wreckage of the practice forward. In a day of Judah's male population thinned by judgment, "seven women will take hold of one man in that day, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach" (Isa 4:1). The reproach is the reproach of the unmarried childless, and the seven-to-one ratio is treated as catastrophe, not as ideal.

Malachi puts the prophetic critique in domestic terms: Yahweh "has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, whom you have betrayed, though she is your partner, and the wife of your covenant" (Mal 2:14). Anyone who breaks that covenant has no part of the Spirit remaining, "neither is such a one seeking a godly seed" (Mal 2:15). The wife-of-your-youth language draws the line at one.

The New Testament One-Wife Norm

Jesus, asked about divorce, walks the question back to creation: "from the beginning of the creation, Male and female he made them. For this cause will a man leave his father and mother, and will stick to his wife; and the two will become one flesh: so that they are no more two, but one flesh" (Mark 10:6-8). The grammar — male, female, two, one flesh — leaves no room for additional wives in the original design.

The Pastoral Epistles formalize the restriction for those who lead. An overseer "must be without reproach, the husband of one wife" (1Ti 3:2); deacons likewise are to be "husbands of one wife, ruling [their] children and their own houses well" (1Ti 3:12); elders in Titus's directive must be "blameless, the husband of one wife, having children who believe" (Titus 1:6). The one-wife clause is consistent across the three lists and is treated as a baseline qualification, not an aspiration.

Sirach on the Single Household

Sirach treats marriage assuming one wife per household and warns against the disorder polygamy and infidelity produce. "Do not be jealous of the wife of your bosom; or else you will teach evil concerning yourself" (Sir 9:1). A worthy wife is described as singular: "A good wife, blessed is her husband, the number of his days is doubled" (Sir 26:1); "a worthy wife cherishes her husband, and he fulfills the years of his life in peace" (Sir 26:2). And the rivalry that the patriarchal narratives dramatize, Sirach states as a maxim: "Grief of heart and sorrow is a wife jealous of another; the scourge of the tongue are they all" (Sir 26:6). The corollary is positive — three things desirable in the sight of the Lord and of men include "a wife and a husband suited to each other" (Sir 25:1) — wife and husband, singular.